How eating breakfast made us weak.

This is not yet another post about how eating tons of sugar and junk food makes us weak. Well, it does make us weak, but I'm not here to state the obvious. I'm here to state the less obvious, which is, how eating tons of sugar and junk food can actually benefit us, if timed correctly. And how eating salads 6 times a day isn't going to do much in your fat burning program.

This is a follow-up to my other post, where I briefly explained of what I'm going to talk about bellow. To not get lost in the first paragraph, please take a minute and go read it through https://steemit.com/life/@backyardgoonie/living-it-upside-down-and-the-science-of-intermittent-fasting

First of all, we have to understand a thing or two about the human body. And before this becomes a biology lesson, let's start with a more reader friendly explanation:

Your body needs energy to survive. You eat to survive. Luckily for us, our bodies are capable of storing reasonably high amounts of energy. We store our energy in the form of glycogen, in the form of fat and in the form of muscle. Our liver and muscles combined can only hold up to about 600 grams of glycogen, while our bone structure can hold unimaginably high amounts of fat and muscle.

Now let's take a break for a second and try to focus. I want you to stay with me on this.

We rely on 3 types of stored energy - stored muscle, stored fat and stored glycogen. Our body chooses (subconsciously) when to use which type of energy. We've been trying to make this less of a subconscious choice by doing the following(assuming most people want more muscles, less fat, or both):

-eating enough to prevent muscle loss
-not eating too much to not store fat
-eating regularly to not run out of glycogen and start losing muscles, or store fat

More food-specifically, we did this:

-eating a lot of protein to feed out muscles
-eating little fat (obviously)
-eating carbohydrates in every meal because we shouldn't run out of glycogen and start losing muscles or storing fat

It all makes sense. Until it doesn't.

We've adopted this idea of using carbohydrates(just to make it clear at this point, pretty much everything that isn't meat or diary is considered carbohydrates) as our primary source of energy so much that we've missed the bigger picture by a light year. We have babied ourselves by eating all the time to the point that we can't even imagine going more than a few hours without food. We HAVE to eat first thing in the morning, or bad things will happen. We fear of running out of energy.

But then, we never thought about using fat or muscle as our primary source of energy. Well, we did to the point of not wanting to burn our muscles and to the point of burning as much fat as possible through exercise.

But if we can use and burn fat to exercise, why can't we use and burn fat for sitting behind a desk for the most part of our day? Why do we need to eat early in the morning only to drive to work and then barely move for the next few hours? And then we need to eat again. Does our brain really burn this much? Well yes it does, but to the point of just HAVING to eat? To the point of exhaustion? Why are we getting fatter then?

Now comes the part with the (simplified) biology lesson.

There are two energy systems responsible for your energy levels: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic requires oxygen and some sort of stored energy to operate, while anaerobic doesn't require oxygen. Anaerobic system further breaks down into lactic and alactic anaerobic. To summary it up, it goes like this:

-alactic anaerobic energy system gives you short, immense bursts of power, lasting up to 20 seconds, and it needs phosphocreatine to operate (that's why bodybuilders consume creatine, even though some don't know it)

-lactic anaerobic energy system turns on after you run out of phosphocreatine, it still gives you a lot of energy(but noticeably less than alactic) and it lasts for a couple of minutes, or until you run out of glucose(carbohydrates, or sugar). When you're exercising and those muscles start burning, you know you ran out of your sugar reserves

-aerobic system takes over when you're not in need of exerting yourself. It can operate for extended periods of time, only requiring you to breathe and either glucose, fat or muscle to break down(yes, you heard that right. You can burn fat by breathing) - this is also the only way fat can be "burned", meaning, it's used during a chemical process, which I have no idea about, but it requires fat and oxygen, and it produces energy

This means (by all logic) that aerobic system should be operating for the most part of our day, using fat for it's fuel, leaving the carbohydrates(glucose) for more demanding tasks, like exercising.

Yet the 21st century idea goes like this - eat all the time to be able to move around, exercise to burn fat. I'm no expert, but I think we've missed the point a bit. At least I've managed to defy the oh so popular law of breakfast and not turning into a fat slob while eating hamburgers.

My idea is this - everyone can keep themselves healthy and full of energy, while exercising less than the average Joe, or at least, exercise differently. Exercising should be a bonus - to be able to jump higher, run longer, have a huge bicep, whatever. But you shouldn't be sweating your balls trying to do a single push-up.

At the beginning, it does require some willpower and effort to reprogram your body. And it starts with skipping breakfast. The cornerstone of any healthy individual. I'm having mine at around 9pm. That's when I break my fast. But that's just me, going into extremes. I'll show you all a more reasonable way to shift from carbohydrates to fat.

A part 2 (possibly even part 3) of "How eating breakfast made us weak" series is coming, since this is already a whole bunch of information, and I want to keep everything somewhat ordered and easy to navigate through. I hope you're already getting the idea of why eating all the time(even if it's good food) ain't that good. Especially first thing in the morning.

Don't be afraid of hunger. You won't waste away. Your muscles won't waste away. Your brain definitely won't waste away. You're just used to run on sugar, that's all.

PS: Yes that's me on the picture. And yes, there's also Jabba the Hutt with a hamburger.